Robert De Niro Bernie Madoff

Robert De Niro Bernie Madoff, Robert De Niro has played gangsters, mafia dons and sociopaths, and now he’s set to take on the biggest white-collar villain of them all: disgraced Ponzi-schemer Bernie Madoff.

HBO, in collaboration with De Niro’s Tribeca Productions, has purchased the rights to the book ‘Truth and Consequences: Inside the Life of the Madoff Family,’ according to the UK Daily Mail. The biography, which will serve as the source material for the TV movie, was the basis for the Madoff family’s recent ’60 Minutes’ interviews.

‘Reservation Road’ writer John Burnham Schwartz will write the screenplay, according to Deadline. The book ‘The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust,’ will also be used to inform the project.

The Madoff story is one filled with tragedy on all sides. After decades of being perceived as a financial genius while living a gigantic lie, Madoff is now serving a 150-year prison sentence for his crimes. In the wake of his $50 billion financial fraud, which left thousands of victims robbed of their life savings, the damage to his family was also immense. Madoff’s son Mark committed suicide by hanging himself last year, and in ‘Truth and Consequences,’ it was revealed that Ruth and Bernie also tried to take their lives by overdosing on sleeping pills.